Ramblings on libraries and life upon the wicked stage

Writing is not something that’s coming easily at the moment.   The final two assignments for my librarianship qualification are not progressing at all.  Quite a number of blog posts have been started but abandoned or deleted due to thoughts fizzling out half way through a paragraph.  Perhaps it is creativity in general that is lacking, as I am struggling to prepare a 5-minute children’s talk for church.

And so it is that I am reduced to a quite miserable blog post, illustrating a quite dramatic change in my life.  Last weekend I replaced my mobile phone.  This is hardly a novel event in the world.  Some people seem to change their phones every few weeks, but this is news indeed in the world of the Singing Librarian. My previous phone had served me well for at least seven years, possibly ten.  I only discovered last summer how to send texts in lower case, and it had never been a constant companion the way that these devices tend to be.  Yet it had become a part of me, a part that felt right despite the teasing about it being a ‘house brick’ and the fact that it quite genuinely was bigger than the cordless hand sets of my land line. It didn’t matter to me that the battery life was shockingly low, even though the battery seemed to weight a ton. It didn’t matter to me that if I wanted to send a text, I had to write the number down first. I suppose I was resisting conformity, going against the flow by owning a mobile phone that wasn’t truly mobile, certainly not in the summer, when pockets big enough to hold such a monster become impractical. Eventually, though, I cracked, and caused great amusement to a phone shop employee when he saw what I wanted to replace.  Great disapppointment as well, when I made it clear that I still wanted a basic telephone, not a camera plus mp3 player plus internet on the go plus food processor that happens to be able to make telephone calls.  I like simplicity, and that is what I got.

Readers can see from the photo just how dramatic a change this is. From a giant beast to a slimline creature that fits happily inside a shirt pocket. From a black behemoth to a happy silver sylph. And yes, my readers would be quite right to suppose that the behemoth has an extendable aerial. I’m afraid it really could make a difference to signal quality sometimes.

The new phone is very novel to me at the moment, but in time, I will no doubt become accustomed to it. Still, it is, for me, a big change. In some ways, it feels like the loss of a part of my personality, a decision to go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing. But mostly it feels sensible and indefinably exciting, as my telephony finally enters the twenty-first century along with the rest of me.

As for the old phone, my faithful servant for all these years, I shall keep hold of it.  If I should ever do a show set around the turn of the millennium, it could be a useful prop.  Until then, I expect I can find a use for it as a paper weight or something equally practical.  Perhaps a door stop…